Yes, music exists for many, many faiths. This isn't a grand revelation.

Again, which songs are the school overlooking? Surely you have some important songs in mind that would be right for a western elementary school class, right? Clearly you have something specific in mind.

I have to have something specific in mind? The claim that we should rush to substantiate the existence of these in schools is based on the notion that they are "of historical value".

Not of "American historical value".

Not even of "Western historical value".

...and I learned world history when I was in K-8. Not really sure what you're taking issue with here, except perhaps that, when you strip away all the BS from this claim, it leaves you with little other choice than to conclude that "historical value" isn't really the motivation here.

Up until the late Classical -early Romantic period, the history of Western vocal music is, pretty much, church music. Very little else exists. To deprive junior high and high school choirs of that historical treasury of great music would be a huge disservice to students.

Much of the historical black American music is spiritual. Likewise, there is a great treasury of music contained in spirituals that should be taught.

A great deal of modern music, either religious or secular, is absolute crap but it is what students are often reduced to if all religious music is banned from public schools.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a radical group of the same ilk as PETA. They fabricate offense where none exists. They would have us believe that a child singing the word God is predatory and will ruin the child. But listening to rap music where women are denigrated and treated as worthless objects; where killing is condoned - that will have no effect on them and should be permitted.

Rufus Lee King:Really, though, when, for instance, are hymnals going to become illegal? Going to have to burn them all!

[fcit.usf.edu image 471x375]

Book burning was before they invented political correctness.Now, instead of destroying material, they try to make you believe its taboo so you'll hide it instead.

/With the history of music and religion so deeply intertwined, one wonders how this even became a case./Separation of church and state was to keep the pope from becoming a legislator, not to ban all mention of religion.

ignite ice:[...] Students are not being encouraged to interpret any of the songs as having religious meaning. They may have religious symbols of religious connotations in the lyrics, but they won't have a religious meaning to someone who isn't religious. [...].

Well, so far, a cursory Googling turns up one set of lyrics to "Thank You For The World So Sweet:"

Thank you God for the world so sweet,Thank you God for the food we eat,Thank you God for the birds that sing,Thank you God for everything.

That's it.

Well, it's not always it - some sources show a last line of "Amen."

So it's not really something that a non-religious person could see another, broader message in. The whole shebang is "A single God exists and made everything and we're thanking him for it."

I was at least agnostic even as a kid (for which my classmates tried to get me sent to the Principal's office once, amusingly enough), but I still loved singing "Children, Go Where I Send Thee" with all the hand motions, "Go Tell It On The Mountain," and "O Come All Ye Faithful." They just sounded neat.

And I'm no fan of censorship in general - it cramped my style when somebody's stupid mom kept us from singing "American Pie" in 6th grade because she couldn't stop clutching her pearls at the "We saw Satan laughing with delight" line.

Buuuuuut.... I'd never heard of this song until this article. I'm not finding any particular historical relevance. It doesn't seem to be an old spiritual or a carol, just a twee little prayer that somebody set to music sometime. And unless it has some killer harmonies, or is some kind of complex and elaborate round, I'm sorta lost on what it's even going to teach.

Unless the school's music program is exceptionally well-funded, the kids aren't going to be good enough at singing to attempt Messiah or a Requiem until high school. Everyone who pursues voice training encounters religious music at that point, of course, because it's good music.

I can see where kids could be introduced to some of this music at some point. Listening to Verdi or Handel or Bach is healthy, and it is moreso at that age when kids need to develop an appreciation for art. Making them try to sing complicated music, though, is a tall order.

fusillade762:So are they going to require reading the bible as a historical document next?

Actually that might be fun.

Actually, I did in 10th grade English- a couple of stories anyway. Then we actually dissected them as historical literature, without getting stupid about it. I agree that music is the same way; there are tons of religious songs, or songs that invoke god, that are just great songs. And if you want to be well educated in music, especially western music, you need to learn them. One of my favorite pieces of music was mozart's requiem. We sang it in Latin. I wasn't required to believe in it, just learn and sing it.

NetOwl:Everyone who pursues voice training encounters religious music at that point, of course, because it's good music.

The majority of exposed penises in western art belong to the baby Jesus.

Not really disputing your claim, it's actually spot on. Most of your big art-pushes throughout history were of a religious nature. Artists need an income after all, and it's usually your religious institutions which had the capital to dole out for such commissions... assuming the pieces weren't works of pure devotion, which they often were as much.

Atheist with little concern for religious music which has cultural, historical, or educational significance. Not knowing exactly how the songs mentioned in the article are taught and used but knowing each of them, I find this difficult to believe the songs are anything more than fond pieces the choir director thought to teach with the school now willing to fight over basically nothing for religious rationale.

Mr. Right:Up until the late Classical -early Romantic period, the history of Western vocal music is, pretty much, church music. Very little else exists. To deprive junior high and high school choirs of that historical treasury of great music would be a huge disservice to students.

If you honestly care only about "historical treasury" then I would expect you to be campaigning for the inclusion of muslim hymns. If, instead, people focus on christian music praising cristian deities and peddling christian doctrine then that obviously has nothing to do with music.

Charlie Freak:There is too much that gets thrown out to the detriment of the student's education.

THIS THIS THIS THIS

I am not Christian, but I love teaching the Bible as literature to my students. 99% have never really read it other than the spoon-fed stories they get in Sunday School. People need to lighten up on all sides.

Speaking as an avowed atheist, the Freedom From Religion foundation really, really needs to hire someone to help them pick their damned battles. Knowing the other shiat the group has been manufacturing outrage over, I doubt fox particularly had to spin this one, it was probably retarded to begin with.

The vast, vast majority of musical movements are rooted in cultural tradition or politics, that means religion is going to pop up all the time. Getting your panties in a wad over certain period songs referencing God is akin to being upset that songs by Bob Dylan reference drugs and are really down on religion. Everything that references religion isn't necessarily religious in nature itself or even _about_ religion, and singing a religious song doesn't require that you actually worship the invisible pink unicorn in question any more than me humming a Charlie Daniels tune obligates me to start a fight with a transvestite in a gay bar and then flee from the cops across a state line at 110 mph while downing a bottle of whiskey*.

*Obviously the silliest reference I could think of, so in a way it's hyperbole, but in my defense this describes the plot of a certain Daniels song quite accurately.

//Or I guess I could stick with the Dylan thing, but a consistent Dylan reference just seems... wrong.

A little over a decade ago in my school choir, and we had a lot of Jewish kids in our program, we sang Mendelssohn's Hallelujah. The whole movement from beginning to end, not just the one really famous bit. Considering we were also a competition choir probably kept any atheist parents from complaining because "ooo! Trophies!" It was usually the Classical religious pieces that got us further in scoring.

/bonus, we went to Carnegie Hall singing all of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, a very Jewish movement of devotional music

I agree but with that said...had religious nutbags not been fighting tooth and nail to get prayer into schools people would be less skeptical about the motives behind singing songs with religious themes in schools.

I'm ok with a big bunch of bullies...I mean lawyers threatening these nearly bankrupt school districts to purge even the slightest Christian reference and all non commercial holidays and events. I think big money from outside groups or even out of state groups should constantly threaten schools, those who run it and those vile teachers to conform, go bankrupt or get out!

KatjaMouse:A little over a decade ago in my school choir, and we had a lot of Jewish kids in our program, we sang Mendelssohn's Hallelujah. The whole movement from beginning to end, not just the one really famous bit. Considering we were also a competition choir probably kept any atheist parents from complaining because "ooo! Trophies!" It was usually the Classical religious pieces that got us further in scoring.

/bonus, we went to Carnegie Hall singing all of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, a very Jewish movement of devotional music

I played "The Lord's Prayer" at the Meyerson Symphony Center with the Dallas Symphony while in high school and I didn't burst into flames.

Jim_Callahan:Speaking as an avowed atheist, the Freedom From Religion foundation really, really needs to hire someone to help them pick their damned battles.

They're not the ones who started the battle. The Freedom From Religion Foundatation wouldn't exists had religous nutbags not been trying to push thier fiction based beliefs into every part of American life.

Charlie Freak:For whatever it's worth, I'm agnostic and it bothers me when a song sung in a school choir can't mention Jesus or even Santa (and many can't). There are LOADS of wonderful, historic works that get tossed completely aside and it does nothing to further music.

As a non-Christian, I find it to be extremely insulting to be inundated every winter with songs about Frosty the Snowman and a reindeer with a genetic defect. There Christmas songs. I know they're Christmas songs; you know they're Christmas songs. Can we drop the pretense and have something with some artistic merit like "Angels We Have Heard On High," rather than something that makes me want to bash my ears with a hammer every time I hear it?

It was singing "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so" at school which made me realise that religion is a load of self-referential crap. I was six at the time. Nice work, school music teacher.

maggoo:Mr. Right: Up until the late Classical -early Romantic period, the history of Western vocal music is, pretty much, church music. Very little else exists. To deprive junior high and high school choirs of that historical treasury of great music would be a huge disservice to students.

If you honestly care only about "historical treasury" then I would expect you to be campaigning for the inclusion of muslim hymns. If, instead, people focus on christian music praising cristian deities and peddling christian doctrine then that obviously has nothing to do with music.

Muslim music is not considered Western. There is a vast treasury of non-Western music but it is relatively rare in this country. There are probably not a handful of music educators in this country conversant enough with non-Western music to even know much about it, let alone teach it.

The possibly-religious songs include "Thank You for the World So Sweet," which says "Thank you God for everything," "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep," which says "I pray the Lord my soul to keep," "Michael Row your Boat Ashore" and "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."

Muta:had religious nutbags not been fighting tooth and nail to get prayer into schools people would be less skeptical about the motives behind singing songs with religious themes in schools.

Meh, as mentioned, the FFR Foundation are pretty much religious nutbags, too, they're just bizarro world religious nutbags.

99.99999% of the time the "atheism is a religion" thing is complete bullshiat, but the FFR guys tend to behave, at minimum, like something of a cult, they're waaaay too obsessed with the importance of arbitrary symbols to really be called properly atheist. Antitheist, maybe.

//As always, I'm more annoyed by stupid when it's on "my side". I expect people that disagree with me (religious people, in this case) to be stupid, because that's something you prepare for emotionally when you disagree with someone. But this kind of shiat gets under my skin almost as bad as the "summer is hot, this proves global warming" idiots.

Jim_Callahan:Speaking as an avowed atheist, the Freedom From Religion foundation really, really needs to hire someone to help them pick their damned battles. Knowing the other shiat the group has been manufacturing outrage over, I doubt fox particularly had to spin this one, it was probably retarded to begin with.

The vast, vast majority of musical movements are rooted in cultural tradition or politics, that means religion is going to pop up all the time. Getting your panties in a wad over certain period songs referencing God is akin to being upset that songs by Bob Dylan reference drugs and are really down on religion. Everything that references religion isn't necessarily religious in nature itself or even _about_ religion, and singing a religious song doesn't require that you actually worship the invisible pink unicorn in question any more than me humming a Charlie Daniels tune obligates me to start a fight with a transvestite in a gay bar and then flee from the cops across a state line at 110 mph while downing a bottle of whiskey*.

*Obviously the silliest reference I could think of, so in a way it's hyperbole, but in my defense this describes the plot of a certain Daniels song quite accurately.

//Or I guess I could stick with the Dylan thing, but a consistent Dylan reference just seems... wrong.

If this "it's important to history!" thing wasn't just the latest Right Wingnut "angle" on how to keep religious material in schools (without giving religion as the only reason), I'd almost agree with you on all points.

The whole "this is no big deal" argument really favors neither side. If it's not a big deal to have them, it logically follows that removing them also shouldn't be a big deal- but clearly it is. Why this is so is also, once again telling of which particular spin machine is behind the resistance.

It's true that religion is unavoidable if you're going to talk about history in school. It's also unavoidable if you're going to talk about art. But again, if the big stink being raised about the dispute weren't so specifically about Christian devotional music, there's be a good deal less to be suspicious about.

I think you and I both know that if this were a move to excise, say the Eastern History curriculum from the high school instead, these same people wouldn't be troubling their eyelashes to bat over it. Or, in other words, this is as much about History as "The Jungle Book" is about Pokemon.

Muta:Jim_Callahan: Speaking as an avowed atheist, the Freedom From Religion foundation really, really needs to hire someone to help them pick their damned battles.

They're not the ones who started the battle. The Freedom From Religion Foundatation wouldn't exists had religous nutbags not been trying to push thier fiction based beliefs into every part of American life.

Meh, FFR are to atheist organizations what PETA is to animal rights organizations, they're mostly around to make more rational groups like American Atheists and the Humanists look bad by comparison.

Captain_Ballbeard:NetOwl: Everyone who pursues voice training encounters religious music at that point, of course, because it's good music.

Just because the Church had a stranglehold on art for so very long doesn't mean we should venerate those works, not while better music (and its composers) was being put to the flame nearby.

It's not just because of church-commissioned stuff (which does not account for, say, Mozart). It's because of the quality of some of it. No one should go through life without hearing Verdi's Requiem, for example. It's an excellent composition.

It's not as if that means that future music students won't sing plenty of Schubert. Getting an education in music means knowing both.

Even some of the best operas have some religious elements, like Salome or Parseval. Even if you don't focus on those (Tristan and Der Ring and Elektra are all much better, and that's just sticking with the same two composers), you still have to know their place in history to get a good big-picture view of music.

I say this as someone who prefers the non-religious music, but I'm biased for several reasons.

Im in a hole of a town right now that went to SCOTUS over school prayer. I've attended school functions locally since the ruling and they were opened in prayer. I wish it had worked for them. It's nothing I'm calling the ACLU over myself, but the minute this organization gets off their back they will probably just try it again. If they are that set on calling "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep" a SONG, I'd call that proselytizing.

Mr. Right:The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a radical group of the same ilk as PETA. They fabricate offense where none exists. They would have us believe that a child singing the word God is predatory and will ruin the child. But listening to rap music where women are denigrated and treated as worthless objects; where killing is condoned - that will have no effect on them and should be permitted.

They're not listening to rap in elementary schools, it's not permitted for the same reason singing prayers shouldn't be.

If you want to indoctrinate your children into believing in the sky man, good for you. Why oh why do you feel the need to indoctrinate everyone else's kids also? Even people who don't want their kids indoctrinated.

SkunkWerks:The whole "this is no big deal" argument really favors neither side. If it's not a big deal to have them, it logically follows that removing them also shouldn't be a big deal- but clearly it is. Why this is so is also, once again telling of which particular spin machine is behind the resistance.

Actually, from the article I'm under the impression that it's not a big deal to the choir director so much as he's (rightfully) offended at the implied insult to his professionalism and somewhat incensed that some random lawyers with a political agenda are trying to make his job arbitrarily complicated just (from his perspective) for the sheer hell of it.

Though I think there is also merit in the argument that you'd have to literally skip entire centuries of music and the entire origin of rock music in the US if you weren't allowed to reference Classical music (commissioned almost entirely by the church) and American hymns and spirituals. Sort of leaves the continuity of the lessons a disjointed mess just as much as only doing religious music would.

susler:They're not listening to rap in elementary schools, it's not permitted for the same reason singing prayers shouldn't be.

Has this changed since the late 80s/early 90s? I was a public school kid and we listened to/sang rap and pop stuff pretty regularly. Nothing with overwhelming streams of obscenity since we had to use radio edits of everything, but still, it was represented.

Should I be cracking jokes about the pussification of America continuing?

Debeo Summa Credo:randomjsa: Strange how all of these 'educational' songs never seem to educate kids using songs that promote any other religion except Christianity.

As usual, if it's just about education let's see what happens if we start singing songs about Allah, and watch the reaction.

America is not a historically Muslim country. You'd have to inject songs that have never been remotely part of American culture. And that would be farkin stupid.

Actually, since you go to school to learn stuff about the world, leaning about non-western music wouldn't be so terrible. I don't know enough about it know if a significant portion of music developed in Muslim cultures is secular, though.

I mean, lots of western music is religious, but I had to pick one piece to show off to someone who knew nothing about western music, I'd probably go with something by Beethoven.

Jim_Callahan:They're not the ones who started the battle. The Freedom From Religion Foundatation wouldn't exists had religous nutbags not been trying to push thier fiction based beliefs into every part of American life.

Meh, FFR are to atheist organizations what PETA is to animal rights organizations, they're mostly around to make more rational groups like American Atheists and the Humanists look bad by comparison.

So you don't like FFR... whatever. It doesn't change my point that groups who fight religious symbols in school are just a reaction to the nutbags that continuously push it. You don't like FFR? Fine. I'll rewrite my sentence to accomidate you.

They're not the ones who started the battle. The American Atheists and the Humanists wouldn't exists had religous nutbags not been trying to push thier fiction based beliefs into every part of American life.

It's predatory to conduct this toward a young, captive audience who would be truant if they didn't attend public school

But songs about how much you love the country, Obama, your school, your sports team, or songs about a man being eaten by a boa constrictor while he describes the painful process in exacting detail (♫I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor and I don't like one bit! Oh no, he's eaten my toe, Oh gee, it's up to my knee♪ - I remember singing this in 2nd grade) is okay?

I'm not overly religious. I haven't been to church in 25 years. But I really see no problem with religious songs. Some are really quite good. Like Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley. It's a really sweet song. As long as you do a variety, who cares if you have a couple religious songs in there? If you are approaching it simply from a musical standpoint, there is no indoctrination going on. In English Lit in 12th grade we looked at some stories from the bible. It wasn't presented as 'you must believe this' it was done strictly from a literary perspective. No one freaked out. One day we were reading about some guy building an ark to save his family from a flood, the next we read about some guy taking ten years to get home after ransacking Troy and meeting hooking up with some sea goddess.

Atheists can be just as bad as Christians. They both try and shove doctrine down your throat. Agnostics on the other hand are like "meh." and leave people in peace.

School says to kids "God created everything and if you don't believe that yo will go to hell" = wrong.School says to kids "Today we have a song about this hippy who could walk on water and magic up some fish chowder" = okay.

Jim_Callahan:Though I think there is also merit in the argument that you'd have to literally skip entire centuries of music and the entire origin of rock music in the US if you weren't allowed to reference Classical music (commissioned almost entirely by the church) and American hymns and spirituals. Sort of leaves the continuity of the lessons a disjointed mess just as much as only doing religious music would.

I see no problem with the argument (as a student of a good deal of history throughout elementary school right up through college, I emphatically agree that religion plays a big part in history, and not in the least, through artistic contributions). And again, if this (and by 'this' I mean 'all of this' - the article, the usual FOX manufactured outrage) weren't so transparently not about that argument, I couldn't find fault in the motive.

Jim_Callahan:Actually, from the article I'm under the impression that it's not a big deal to the choir director so much as he's (rightfully) offended at the implied insult to his professionalism and somewhat incensed that some random lawyers with a political agenda are trying to make his job arbitrarily complicated just (from his perspective) for the sheer hell of it.

Sadly, this grew far beyond the Choir Director well before he was even interviewed. And not solely through the "big stink" raised by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, either. The complications of a school choir director aren't really news so much to folks- at best it's window-dressing. The "war on Christianity" is the sort of thing that keeps Fox viewers glued to the tubes.